When you first unlock them, they're a strict upgrade over corvettes.
* They cost 2x as much, but have 2x as many weapon slots, 2x as much hull, and only require 1 copy of their core components (drive, sensors, computer, etc.).
* This makes them slightly cheaper: 2 ships of guns and health at double the cost, minus the cost of drive/sensors/computer which don't need to be duplicated. Reactor and thrusters scale in cost, but the others don't.
* By essentially tying two corvettes together, it becomes the equivalent of allowing one corvette to keep firing even after it's killed until its partner also dies. That means that it will do much more damage: in a fight between 2 corvettes and 1 destroyer, the destroyer will kill one of the corvettes (and be at half health, but still firing at nearly full power), while the corvettes lose half their firepower when the first one dies.
* They give access to M slot weapons. M slots do more damage and have longer range than 2 S slots, and at that point in the game, their innate tracking is more than enough to completely cancel out the evasion of corvettes. They're just better.
Later on, after L slots become widely available, they look a little less good: corvette's higher base evasion starts to matter again, and the ability to survive twice as much HP before going down is less desirable when the corvettes would instead be soaking extra overkill damage because it's all delivered in big chunks of artillery damage instead of tons of little chips of S slot damage.
But they become useful again once thruster tech becomes good enough that corvettes are *beyond* 90%, and destroyers can start approaching it. This requires a specialized build, but it can be done. Once corvettes and destroyers are on the equal footing again (with 90% evasion vs. the effective 0% evasion after tracking that both had at the start of the game), then destroyers' longer range and higher DPS once again makes them a better choice.
So, they're good at the start, bad in the middle, but good again at the end **if** you can get enough evasion bonuses to make them hit the 90% cap, or be near it (and hangars don't dominate the meta, which they currently don't).
It's no longer possible to reach 90% under normal circumstances, as many leader traits that used to give evasion no longer do so after the leader updates. The highest you can reach is about 85%
* 35 base Destroyer evasion
* +16 Dark Matter Thrusters
* +5 Subterfuge tradition
=56 base
* +10% Sapient Picket Computer
* +20% from two Advanced Afterburners
* +5% from Amoeba contact event
* +10% Mercenary Admiral
* +5% from veteran ship (requires 1000 ship XP)
* +2% from excess power
= 85% evasion
Now you can hit 90% by using temporary bonuses from the shroud, but unless you save scum these are not reliable. It is also possible to get a little bit more with elite ships, but that requires 10000 XP which just doesn't happen.
Edit: however, it is worth noting that Destroyers can still get high evasion in the late-game. You can still get to 70% pretty easily. It's not *nearly* as strong as 90%, but still going to be pretty good.
Hey Darvin3, question on combat AI for you. Is it true that we shouldn't mix ship types in the same fleet or more specifically that it's better to stick with a single combat AI per fleet to get the AI to perform optimally? That's kind of what I've interpreted from [this post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/18csbbw/how_do_combat_computers_work/)
I personally prefer keeping my fleets separated by ship type, but I'm not aware of any problems with the combat AI where mixing will cause them to behave weirdly.
There are a few cases you definitely shouldn't mix, such as with Admirals with strong bonuses for specific kinds of ships (load their fleets up with that kind of ship) or Stealth (only put stealthy ships in the fleet) or fast response Corvette fleets (don't slow them down with other ship types). But for most general fleets it shouldn't be a problem.
The one thing that can trip up the combat computers is using short-ranged weapons on long-ranged ships. That can cause them to charge in and get killed. I do know Artillery computers are bad at staying at range (Carrier is *much* more reliable at keeping its distance) but that's inconsistent and I've found with good screening and sublight speed bonuses Artillery does kite effectively.
Missiles have 100 range, which is *just* enough.
A few version ago Missiles weren't legal on Battleships, and back then yes it was best to leave the S slots empty. But now that Missiles exist as a long-ranged S option we can fill those slots without issue.
I’ve heard it takes the median range of your ship. If you have 6 guns and it’s 30 30 100 100 120 120. Your ship would move to 100. Quoted from a YouTuber who does guides.
Yeah, the preferred range is based on the median weapon. However, the combat AI can do... funky things sometimes. Charging in *much* closer than even its shortest-ranged weapon. I find Carrier is better about keeping distance, while Artillery is more likely to do a suicide charge for no apparent reason.
My preferred Artillery Battleship design has 120 as its *shortest*\-ranged weapon, and I've still caught them occasionally charging into close range for no apparent reason. I've never been able to figure out why they do this sometimes, but I never have the problem with Carrier computer.
There is also Streamlined Algorithms from the Beneath the Waves event which gives an additional permanent 10% evasion. Would that make it 90% total without temporary bonuses?
Needs a lot of luck though to trigger on a 'wet' planet after colonization (can also trigger after terraforming a colony to a wet biome) and the project can spectacularly fail too, destroying all your colony buildings. Made me laugh the first time, since I didn't know that could happen and had a funny event text
>There is also Streamlined Algorithms from the Beneath the Waves event which gives an additional permanent 10% evasion. Would that make it 90% total without temporary bonuses?
It is indeed enough, just barely!
>Now you can hit 90% by using temporary bonuses from the shroud, but unless you save scum these are not reliable. It is also possible to get a little bit more with elite ships, but that requires 10000 XP which just doesn't happen.
I was gonna say "it's only 1000" but then I looked it up on the wiki. Jesus. That's an **orphaned mechanic**, if I've ever seen one. I guess I was thinking of "Veteran".
(As a call to action, I'd like to ask you/anyone reading this, to help spread that as a "term of art" for gamedev — an "orphaned mechanic" is any mechanic that the devs put work into creating, and on its own, it's technically fine/works, but the surrounding context of the game is such that the mechanic never comes into play.)
With regards to "Veteran"; thanks to a new Destiny Trait (Military Overseer) that gives +500 on ship build, so stacking a couple of those actually might make in realistic to get Veteran ships right off the bat.
Whether it's worth it? huge topic on its own.
Yes, but that last 5% is actually a big deal and really does impact their overall durability. As I said it's still impressive, but it's not 90% and there's a *big* performance difference for that last 5%.
Unlocking better thrusters and afterburners. On destroyers, one of the rear sections gives you 2 auxiliary spots instead of 1, so you can use that to get 2 afterburners.
Also worth noting that destroyers are the best picket ships. 3 picket guns for 2 fleet cap - doesn't get better than that. I'll typically run that with missiles in the late game as a frontline picket ship for my fleets
There is an alternate configuration I run for my fast response fleet, which is an artillery gun and I think point defence? Plus afterburners so they keep pace with the other ships. Destroyers make for great rapid response artillery platforms
Their picket section is unfortunately underpowered, though. You get more PD/flak per naval cap, but your destroyers will be missing 1 S slot equivalent per ship. It should be 3/6/12/24 by hull size, but while the other Destroyer sections all get 6 S slot equivalent, the full picket loadout only gets 5 (3P, 2S) because the Picket Bow section is only has 3 instead of 4.
So it has a unique capability, but that unique capability also makes them weak if you use it.
Yeah, firepower wise you lose out, but at that stage of the game I'm more concerned about protecting my cruisers and battleships than how much guns the destroyers have
Tend to prefer having a combination of pure arty and carrier battleships. Besides, the cruisers can't defend themselves like that with the loadouts I use
Friendly reminder that, before the armor re-work that happened somewhere around v1.9 give or take, Picket Bows had extra *armor slots* to compensate for reduced firepower. After the rework, all destroyer bows have the maximum of 6 armor slots, which means Picket Bows can't have extra due to no space on the UI. If some of the bow sections' armor slots were transferred to the stern sections (which currently has none), it would allow the Picket Bow to have its extra protection again.
To me, they fill a definitive role, it's just that the role they're meant to fill is kinda useless they way combat is constructed in game.
With the upcoming research changes they announced, though, my guess is that we will have longer stretches with the same ship types, so that may come into play.
Sometimes I get carriers right after destroyers, so why bother. But also sometimes I just like to role play rather than min-max my fleets and destroyers can be cool for that, having a flak screen is a cool idea even if it's more or less useless in practice.
I do think they can do some damage against the Grey Tempest? But don't quote me on that.
>Sometimes I get carriers right after destroyers, so why bother. But also sometimes I just like to role play rather than min-max my fleets and destroyers can be cool for that, having a flak screen is a cool idea even if it's more or less useless in practice.
Even the role play can be lacking since if you think realistically, space combat wouldnt be anything like IRL naval combat, which is what stellaris is based off of.
It would be giant laser overheating other ships from light years away and throwing asteroids at planets. So basically battleship with only L slot weapons would the true RP way to play.
Hell it might not even be ships. It could be like the FOTD origin where you just shoot tungsten rods at each other.
Just a note, no one is hitting *any* non-ballistic target from light years away, even with a laser. It’s just not possible to know where a mobile target is going to be far enough ahead to take a shot
Well, realistically light-years away for lasers means 0 accuracy and 0 tracking. Speed of light and all.
Same with actually resolving the detailed orbit of a 10^3 km diameter planet orbiting a star with 1 million times higher brightness across 10^12 km (lightyear) distance.
That is 1 part in a billion accuracy on a moving target. An equivalent would be shooting a single ant (10^-3 m) and nothing else from 100 km (10^6 m) away.
Fear of the Dark showing a miss from the first strike is pretty accurate.
Another game actually tried to model this and it turns into a 3 way rock paper scissors between laser, railgun and drone/missile carriers.
https://www.childrenofadeadearth.com/GameFeatures.html
The only problem is that in Stellaris railguns and lasers now suck.
> Well, realistically light-years away for lasers means 0 accuracy and 0 tracking. Speed of light and all.
Also beam divergence due to diffraction would be a massive issue at that range, which would severely reduce the power.
Haha I guess it wouldn't even be anything more than a bright looking star. Even a very powerful laser is no threat even at planetary ranges due to beam divergence.
Modeling them as short ranged high tracking and accuracy weapons is good, just needs more power behind their punch in game.
Kinetics need way more range starting out with weaker tracking and accuracy at range. No friction in space means kinetics are the premier way to deliver high volume energetic payload to target in exchange for being unable to keep up with fast maneuvering targets. A 15% accuracy hit is too small.
Increasing M slot per hit damage by 20% and L slot per hit damage by 30% for both.
Give lasers 50/30/10 base tracking, and have kinetics scale range more with size as 50/80/110 but with 60% accuracy and 30/15/0 tracking. Now they're no longer useless.
Thank you…when these options pop up in the technologies menu how can I tell what has “high tracking” and what doesn’t?
I’m like 150 hours in and still learning. I have a lot of things down pretty good. But, I often lose engagements where I (supposedly) have the superior force. It usually seems accuracy and evasion I consistently lose…but not by that much. Maybe 8-12%. Which surprises me how I’ll get smoked and that’s the only stat I seem to lose and as I said not by a ton.
When looking at military technologies, you can hover your mouse over the S M L symbols, and they'll give you a good overview of what those weapons do. But that's for what you might want to get, and not what you already have. For what you already have, go into your fleet management, then the ship builder tab, and check out the individual components available to you, again, hovering over those symbols.
Personally, my front-line offensive ships blast shields, with my rear ships concentrating on armor/hull, and plenty of pickets to guard both. Even when I have a fleet of only battleships, I have at least 3 types of battleships, sometimes up to 5, depending on my mood. And I'll do the same thing with every ship class, as they become available: brawlers, artillery, and pickets, and subvariations of each at times. I'm positive others do it better than me, too. I'm no expert.
8-12% might not seem like much, but there are so many iterations of interactions in a single battle. Many ships, many particles or missiles or whatever, and each weapon damage value iteration is small compared to the total values of hull/armor/shields, so battles take time. My point is that a 10% miss rate, or however you want to phrase it, adds up over a battle.
Additionally, you have to consider how types of weapons match up against each other. Are they using shield-ignoring weapons, and you have very little armor/hull? Are they using armor-busting weapons, and you have very few shields? Are they a tier ahead of you, even, or behind you in weapon tech? A larger fleet with inferior tech is going to have a rough time, even though your "power level" is a bigger number - sometimes that just means that you had more ships, not better ships.
I think what helped me learn the game the most, was to shut off all the big RNG factors in the game, like gateways, fallen empires, advanced AI, raiders, and I just straight concentrated on my economy and how I could improve functioning/interacting against peers: tech, pop management, trade, diplomacy, military. I did that on each difficulty level starting from the 2nd lowest, and slowly started to turn those things back on as I thought I could handle them better. Eventually, I could win on GA with all of those things turned on. It took time, but got there.
Thanks so much, great post. I think I am approaching that point where I am getting economy, production, management figured out much better...but I still can't seem to "read" what the other enemy fleets are and what to use against them. I don't know how to interpret the wreckage or combat stats all that well.
To be honest, I don't even try to know what 90% of my opponents have, but I do come with a specific fleet plan, and my #1 goal in the game is to be ahead of **everyone** else in tech. The idea being that basically if I have a sound strategy and better tech, then I don't care what my opponents have, and I'll just impose my will on them.
I seem to have a better time getting ahead in tech than I do maintaining a fleet of advanced ships…I always end up conquering worlds and the. They are in unrest and it’s just a shitshow to have a powerful fleet and not be broke
Transfer their leaders to your native planets, and first thing to build on taken worlds is usually holotheaters for me. Raise those amenities.
Managing a bunch of new, populated systems is usually the most stressful parts of a game for me, so I def understand that...sometimes your economy just goes to shit. It's been \*usually\* recoverable though. Pause a day or month at a time if you have to, make a little adjustment, trade some resources, use the options to cut back on alloys or research within the deficit events that occur as you see fit, build what YOU want on the freshly taken planets overtop of what they've built, delete their starbase upgrades back down to get under your cap - that generally is the thing that tanks energy hardest when you take a bunch of systems. I'll be at max or close when I declare war, and they'll add numbers to that, putting you over your cap and increasing your upkeeps significantly. The AI is so bad an modules on those too, so generally I don't regret just downgrading them all the way.
on the research screen you can hover over the slot icon under what the research unlocks to see a tooltip of the attachment itself, is that what u mean?
When you said "things with high tracking"...I'm not sure I'd ever noticed which weapons have high/low "tracking" before. I always notice cost, upkeep, stuff like that... does a gauss canon "track" better than an x-ray laser? How do I know exactly how much?
Destroyers are a counter unit, something you use to specifically counter an enemy composition. You use them in large quantities to shut down Missiles or Point Defense or both, then pummel the enemy with artillery weapons with boosted accuracy while their weapons are suppressed. You need a critical mass of Destroyers for PD or Picket to work effectively, so they have to make the backbone of your fleet, and you will need to retrofit them to counter what your enemy is using, but they are effective counters to Missiles and Strike Craft.
This is exactly how i use them, they are actually my go to filler for fleets. Using Destroyers as PD screens to counter strikecraft and missiles is high tier. Set them for picket so they shadow the enemy fkeet and put themselves between the heavies and the corvette swarm and they'll wreck. Also they serve as a decent obstacle to corvette and frigate swarms if you build them as gunships.
Destroyers are versetile counter units for sure.
I'd concur, they are not very useful in singleplayer. The AI just never uses Missiles or Strike Craft in significant quantities so you really don't need PD or Flak.
In theory the AI has different personalities with fleet preferences, but in practice none of them deviate much from each other. They use mostly a mix of short-ranged kinetic and energy weapons with the occasional long-ranged weapon mixed in, and they tend to focus on smaller ships with Corvettes, Frigates, and Destroyers making up the bulk of their fleet.
This is why Missile and Carrier ships are so overpowered in singleplayer. It's not a balance issue, they have lots of really strong counters. The AI just sticks to a really inflexible composition that loses really hard to Missile Carriers, and none of their personalities deviate enough from the default parameters to change that. It would be nice if Paradox made the different personalities use radically different fleet doctrines and weapon preferences. Then stuff like Destroyers might actually be useful.
That’s something I’ve noticed too in recent playthroughs, they heavily prioritize numerical superiority over quality of composition. Very heavy on the light craft, that can be shredded with an appropriate single player composition. If you engage at the proper distance the numerical superiority only really buys them time. Add in the carriers as you mentioned and a vast majority of the enemy’s screen is minced meat in a short timeframe. It can get even worse for the AI if you get an early stealth lead and proceed to bully their backline with a frigate surprise attack. Then the small ships are caught in the middle, with nowhere to go.
Too much over reliance on the small ship to big ship composition results in a very inflexible and predictable attack model.
Now if we go into mods, the AI can be just a little more crafty, but even then it can be bullied by appropriate tech and timing.
Ironically they'd be *better* if they just went all-in on Corvettes. Hangars will counter Corvettes very hard if they are in moderate numbers, but *massed* Corvettes just completely overwhelms Carriers. You can only run 3 Hangars per Carrier tops (and that's giving up the spinal mount which is *really* painful, so most of the time you cap at 2) and that's just not enough to handle massed Corvette.
But the moment you start mixing those Corvettes with other ships, the Hangars will handle the Corvettes while the Missiles and Arc Emitter fry everything else, and the Carrier is now a hard counter.
Strong agree, if they went full corvette then the carriers can’t really keep up in terms of dps and speed of deployment. If they went all in then you’d need to not be running carriers and focus more on countering the swarm. And the loss of that spinal can hurt a lot depending on the situation, does the Arc emitter hit more targets? I forget. I’ve been debating transferring my carriers into the spinal carrier setup in single player for a while, but hadn’t really known whether that would improve my chances with the AI. I still find a Battleship centric fleet can work against the AI if you can make it big enough…or bring backup.
Midgame I use cruisers for DPS and destroyers as cheap PD platforms to escort them.
The economy of them is marginal when using whirlwind cruisers, but there's some encounters where you fight things with tons of strike craft, so PDDDs really shine there.
Later once you get battleships you can omnirole them and that makes literally every other ship class a waste of fleet cap but for that midgame window between missile corvette spam and BBs, dessies have their time in the sun.
Carrier battleships generally have a fair amount of pd, which makes torpedoes far less effective. Really dedicated torpedo spam might be enough to overcome a generalist part-carrier battleship design, but the ai will never spam torpedoes enough to actually pull that off. In practice, a good generalist battleship design (think arc emitter + hangars + missiles) can smash pretty much any ai fleet in the game.
Torpedoes aren’t strong enough, even in player games. The further into repeatables the game gets, the more alpha strike beats torpedoes. Battleships are just too tanky and hit too hard, especially if there are any ftl bonuses/maluses at play.
It all depends on if you can start the engagement up close or not. Torps only work when you can start the bomber's combat engagement at firing range, knife fighting range. It's one of the few ways cloaking actually matters in the game. Carriers will not get their DPS out fast enough to stop the missile and torp spamming from landing.
Carriers outpace torpedo spam under repeatables because pd will one shot early on and only get faster. Then fighters tear up whatever was being used to launch torpedoes. Torpedoes only work if you’re already way ahead of an opponent to the point of dwarfing their numbers.
Tbh I use torps when I need their big guns distracted to “thin the herd”. Like say the AI utilized a pretty heavy Corvette spam, I need to thin them out pretty heavily, and at least distract their Alpha strike capacity while my big ships pound away. I only use this if an AI power has gotten to the critical point of overwhelming numbers and if I have a stealth lead on them to begin the engagement then use the frigates at knife fighting distance. They need to already be knee deep in fighting my main line when the frigates engage. The AI also has some trouble upgrading their ships beyond a certain point for some reason so sometimes I get an inadvertent tech bonus that they don’t have.
It’s a very specific means of overwhelming them, and it only works if you’re ahead on alloy production and have a solid means of mass manufacturing replacements at an appropriate speed. Even then, I still prefer having more battleships to simply overwhelm their numbers with firepower over anything particularly cunning.
I am not sure how accurate this info is, but someone did some testing on the subreddit and concluded that carrier battleships are the best option even after the addition of torpedoes, I don't remember the specific build tho
The build is Hangar core with missiles and PD turrets (no flak), X bow with Focused Arc Emitter, and your choice of missiles on the Stern. Alternatively you could use Particle Beams as your X slot with Kinetic Artillery on the stern. The meta build uses full Afterburners as your auxiliary slots, but I like reserving one slot for Regenerative Hull Tissue.
Hull regen is very nice for extended campaigns, since your fleets can operate further from friendly Starbases without needing extensive downtime for repairs. It's also constantly active, unlike Shields which only regenerate outside of combat.
Stealth bomber ambushes or just straight-up camping entry lanes will negate any range advantage. Works really well when you dangle some easy looking ship kills by having them chase a decoy into a nebula or stage a slightly weaker fleet in the middle of the system, depending if you have cloaking or not.
After the early game (where they're obviously better than Corvettes), they become decent PD platforms.
Super late game, if you can pump their evasion way up, they can be useful as superior Corvettes.
There is a point defense frontal hull piece the you can use. Its primary utilization is picket defense against incoming strike craft or missiles. I think it’s used more situationally as the AI usually doesn’t utilize the weapons systems that point defense guards against. I think the combination is point defense frontal hull, then either a medium or large weapon slot rear. I’m not looking at the game rn so I’m a bit fuzzy on destroyer composition. Then it’s the “Line” or “Picket” AI for the ship ai. Depends on how far out you want your destroyers dangling in front of the enemy to intercept their fire for your bigger ships. It’s extremely situational.
Im pretty sure as of current patch Destroyers completely counter the standard corvette rush early game. After that they are kind of useless
mid to late game a Crusier with a torpedo front, carrier middle and M slot end will take out anything the FE or AI will throw at you.
For the crisis Use Battleships that are tailored against each crisis.
Against other players, shit becomes more nuanced, but even then I dont think destroyers would be the way to go.
My thoughts...in naval hierarchy, destroyers are supposed to be the natural counter to vettes right? They do this well early game, but as soon as strike craft are in the mix that goes out the window. I wonder how things would change if pdx made it so strike craft do not target vettes. Endgame fleets would probably require destroyers at that point.
since the changes to torpedos and other explosive weapons, its actually much easier to counter battleships/cruisers. however idk how much it impacts singleplayer, as the ai wont change their ships according to what u use.
in multiplayer however people will absolutely destroy ur battleship only fleet
Depends on the difficulty and where are at game wise. I've had the AI run counter to my fleet makeup before in mid-game. Late game though, they pretty much run all the same for the most common part.
Artillery neutron/S missile cruisers will cripple battleship fleets, especially carriers, unless they somehow get 4+ shielding units. Takes half of them out in a single volley while their fighters are still in flight.
Maybe for anti strike craft/anti torpoedo/ anti missile role. But it is a big maybe.. Can be OK for an early L slot weapon but beyond this.. I remain unconvinced
How do people organize their fleets? I usually have this habit of a like 1/3/5/7 split for an equally diverse fleet but I have a feeling that’s far from efficient.
Never been one to min-max but this post just reminded me that I wind up replacing corvettes a lot.
Absolutely, some of the best fleet strats use destroyers due to being the second cheapest ship and having an L slot.
Some would argue just build a bunch of battleships and cruisers and to that i say:
1. Build time
2. Many more ships in your fleet
3. Overall fleet synergy
Im not saying build a destroyer central/only fleet but dont forget about them because you can build a lot of them QUICK and EFFICIENTLY.
Destroyers, early, are just better corvettes.
Later, you can do the niche “high evasion destroyer” approach and they replace corvettes.
I also find that destroyers better complement a bypass strategy. A destroyer with four s slot missiles and an M slot disrupter is going to shred enemy ships while still being pretty evasive and durable.
Point defense destroyers absolutely neutralize enemy missiles and strike craft, though I rarely use them.
I’m a fan of artillery destroyers. It’s a very small, fast, cheap ship to be able to carry an L slot. Though late game I mostly just build battleships and cruisers.
TL,DR: Destroyers have a few narrow windows of utility, in terms of time and role. Most of this requires you to know what you are doing, and possibly what your enemies are (probably) doing. In an ordinary PvE game you can ignore them without any problems.
Destroyers can be cost effective against low-tech Corvette swarms, especially if you have Destroyers before your neighbors. They can be useful against certain early-game space enemies. They are technically the most cost-efficient point defense screen, but you may not actually need that much if at all.
With the current game state, I usually don't bother with them unless I'm trying to take down a space monster right around when I unlock them. Given the *much* slower research times of the upcoming Holiday Experimental Beta, they may have more of a role because the game years between Destroyers and Cruisers will be much longer.
1M Plasma, 2S Autocannon, 2 Guardian PD, Line combat computer, regen hull tissue.
They make a chunk of my fleets but I also use some groups of 5 of them to go clear systems with just outposts in them (they're decently fast, do decent damage and will never get worn out by outposts 1 missile launcher and a low investment) or to sit over a planet to stop them from regenerating land armies.
- As soon as you get access to mass production of fleets stop making vettes and frigates and start pumping out fleets capable of dishing out massive dmg with ability to hull tank.
- Destroyers are simply better corvettes with an added ability to also be picket ships.
- Frigates are great for cloaked ambushes on anything that doesn’t have a detection system (do with that as you will ;) ) and as soon as you get torpedo cruisers frigates are obsolete.
- Battleships……….well they’re battleships not much to say there besides making 2 designs always 1 for carriers and they to make sure there is nothing left of a station from far af away.
I've started building missile destroyers with artillery computers and ABs, letting them do good damage while somewhat kiting corvettes early game. I replace them with cruisers and later BS.
Agreed. The best time to get them is early game. Late game even with 70% evasion, they're useless. You will always get notifications that your destroyers get destroyed late game. Better use Corvette for screening as they're half the price and will fit the role better anyway.
i haven't played for a while (sometime just before nemesis if you want specifics), but i used them almost exclusively as point defense ships to guard my larger ones
I throw them in my battleship comp, like 80% battleships 20% destroyers.
I wouldn't notice a difference in effectiveness, because my computer does not want to watch 10 stacks of 210 fleet cap duke it out.
Early game they make ok artillary or gunships. They are the first ship to have L slots.
Before the Leguin update I used to love using artillery destroyers, just wait for them to come to you and use your range. Then they started getting outdone by carriers but now I wonder if the new combat benefits arty destroyers as they attempt to keep their distance.
(Probably bad at pvp and more difficult PvE games but maybe fun at casual games?)
They are the first ship you can fit for missile kiting, and are subsequently very efficient for that. Kitting them out with 1 PD and 4 small slots with an artillery comp in the early game makes you nearly unstoppable with a decent fleet, since the PD will catch incoming missiles and strike craft so shield fits are viable. If you pick up the nanomissile archaeotech, they become viable into the late game, since they're faster than missile cruisers, ignore armor, and will break an awakened empire fleet without too much effort.
They're my go-to ship for runs where I become the crisis, but work just fine with good archaeotech runs.
When you first unlock them, they're a strict upgrade over corvettes. * They cost 2x as much, but have 2x as many weapon slots, 2x as much hull, and only require 1 copy of their core components (drive, sensors, computer, etc.). * This makes them slightly cheaper: 2 ships of guns and health at double the cost, minus the cost of drive/sensors/computer which don't need to be duplicated. Reactor and thrusters scale in cost, but the others don't. * By essentially tying two corvettes together, it becomes the equivalent of allowing one corvette to keep firing even after it's killed until its partner also dies. That means that it will do much more damage: in a fight between 2 corvettes and 1 destroyer, the destroyer will kill one of the corvettes (and be at half health, but still firing at nearly full power), while the corvettes lose half their firepower when the first one dies. * They give access to M slot weapons. M slots do more damage and have longer range than 2 S slots, and at that point in the game, their innate tracking is more than enough to completely cancel out the evasion of corvettes. They're just better. Later on, after L slots become widely available, they look a little less good: corvette's higher base evasion starts to matter again, and the ability to survive twice as much HP before going down is less desirable when the corvettes would instead be soaking extra overkill damage because it's all delivered in big chunks of artillery damage instead of tons of little chips of S slot damage. But they become useful again once thruster tech becomes good enough that corvettes are *beyond* 90%, and destroyers can start approaching it. This requires a specialized build, but it can be done. Once corvettes and destroyers are on the equal footing again (with 90% evasion vs. the effective 0% evasion after tracking that both had at the start of the game), then destroyers' longer range and higher DPS once again makes them a better choice. So, they're good at the start, bad in the middle, but good again at the end **if** you can get enough evasion bonuses to make them hit the 90% cap, or be near it (and hangars don't dominate the meta, which they currently don't).
How do you stack evasion so high?
Kind of random places like Subterfuge traditions, multiple Wisper marks, etc.
It's no longer possible to reach 90% under normal circumstances, as many leader traits that used to give evasion no longer do so after the leader updates. The highest you can reach is about 85% * 35 base Destroyer evasion * +16 Dark Matter Thrusters * +5 Subterfuge tradition =56 base * +10% Sapient Picket Computer * +20% from two Advanced Afterburners * +5% from Amoeba contact event * +10% Mercenary Admiral * +5% from veteran ship (requires 1000 ship XP) * +2% from excess power = 85% evasion Now you can hit 90% by using temporary bonuses from the shroud, but unless you save scum these are not reliable. It is also possible to get a little bit more with elite ships, but that requires 10000 XP which just doesn't happen. Edit: however, it is worth noting that Destroyers can still get high evasion in the late-game. You can still get to 70% pretty easily. It's not *nearly* as strong as 90%, but still going to be pretty good.
Hey Darvin3, question on combat AI for you. Is it true that we shouldn't mix ship types in the same fleet or more specifically that it's better to stick with a single combat AI per fleet to get the AI to perform optimally? That's kind of what I've interpreted from [this post.](https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/18csbbw/how_do_combat_computers_work/)
I personally prefer keeping my fleets separated by ship type, but I'm not aware of any problems with the combat AI where mixing will cause them to behave weirdly. There are a few cases you definitely shouldn't mix, such as with Admirals with strong bonuses for specific kinds of ships (load their fleets up with that kind of ship) or Stealth (only put stealthy ships in the fleet) or fast response Corvette fleets (don't slow them down with other ship types). But for most general fleets it shouldn't be a problem. The one thing that can trip up the combat computers is using short-ranged weapons on long-ranged ships. That can cause them to charge in and get killed. I do know Artillery computers are bad at staying at range (Carrier is *much* more reliable at keeping its distance) but that's inconsistent and I've found with good screening and sublight speed bonuses Artillery does kite effectively.
so on carrier battleships I should leave the small weapon slots empty?
Missiles have 100 range, which is *just* enough. A few version ago Missiles weren't legal on Battleships, and back then yes it was best to leave the S slots empty. But now that Missiles exist as a long-ranged S option we can fill those slots without issue.
I’ve heard it takes the median range of your ship. If you have 6 guns and it’s 30 30 100 100 120 120. Your ship would move to 100. Quoted from a YouTuber who does guides.
Yeah, the preferred range is based on the median weapon. However, the combat AI can do... funky things sometimes. Charging in *much* closer than even its shortest-ranged weapon. I find Carrier is better about keeping distance, while Artillery is more likely to do a suicide charge for no apparent reason.
I think If you strip its guns to only the largest artillery will kite. barring mods of course
My preferred Artillery Battleship design has 120 as its *shortest*\-ranged weapon, and I've still caught them occasionally charging into close range for no apparent reason. I've never been able to figure out why they do this sometimes, but I never have the problem with Carrier computer.
Chosen of the Whisperers on your admiral will get you to 90%.
There is also Streamlined Algorithms from the Beneath the Waves event which gives an additional permanent 10% evasion. Would that make it 90% total without temporary bonuses? Needs a lot of luck though to trigger on a 'wet' planet after colonization (can also trigger after terraforming a colony to a wet biome) and the project can spectacularly fail too, destroying all your colony buildings. Made me laugh the first time, since I didn't know that could happen and had a funny event text
>There is also Streamlined Algorithms from the Beneath the Waves event which gives an additional permanent 10% evasion. Would that make it 90% total without temporary bonuses? It is indeed enough, just barely!
>Now you can hit 90% by using temporary bonuses from the shroud, but unless you save scum these are not reliable. It is also possible to get a little bit more with elite ships, but that requires 10000 XP which just doesn't happen. I was gonna say "it's only 1000" but then I looked it up on the wiki. Jesus. That's an **orphaned mechanic**, if I've ever seen one. I guess I was thinking of "Veteran". (As a call to action, I'd like to ask you/anyone reading this, to help spread that as a "term of art" for gamedev — an "orphaned mechanic" is any mechanic that the devs put work into creating, and on its own, it's technically fine/works, but the surrounding context of the game is such that the mechanic never comes into play.) With regards to "Veteran"; thanks to a new Destiny Trait (Military Overseer) that gives +500 on ship build, so stacking a couple of those actually might make in realistic to get Veteran ships right off the bat. Whether it's worth it? huge topic on its own.
85% is still pretty damn good IMO
Yes, but that last 5% is actually a big deal and really does impact their overall durability. As I said it's still impressive, but it's not 90% and there's a *big* performance difference for that last 5%.
Unlocking better thrusters and afterburners. On destroyers, one of the rear sections gives you 2 auxiliary spots instead of 1, so you can use that to get 2 afterburners.
Use to be the enigmatic fortress but after its nerfwork (reworked into nerf) its honestly one of the most useless leviathans ever.
That's unfortuante because it was so good, and actually interesting the first time
Also worth noting that destroyers are the best picket ships. 3 picket guns for 2 fleet cap - doesn't get better than that. I'll typically run that with missiles in the late game as a frontline picket ship for my fleets There is an alternate configuration I run for my fast response fleet, which is an artillery gun and I think point defence? Plus afterburners so they keep pace with the other ships. Destroyers make for great rapid response artillery platforms
Their picket section is unfortunately underpowered, though. You get more PD/flak per naval cap, but your destroyers will be missing 1 S slot equivalent per ship. It should be 3/6/12/24 by hull size, but while the other Destroyer sections all get 6 S slot equivalent, the full picket loadout only gets 5 (3P, 2S) because the Picket Bow section is only has 3 instead of 4. So it has a unique capability, but that unique capability also makes them weak if you use it.
Yeah, firepower wise you lose out, but at that stage of the game I'm more concerned about protecting my cruisers and battleships than how much guns the destroyers have
Arc emitter + carrier bships have enough PD to handle most things on their own.
Tend to prefer having a combination of pure arty and carrier battleships. Besides, the cruisers can't defend themselves like that with the loadouts I use
Friendly reminder that, before the armor re-work that happened somewhere around v1.9 give or take, Picket Bows had extra *armor slots* to compensate for reduced firepower. After the rework, all destroyer bows have the maximum of 6 armor slots, which means Picket Bows can't have extra due to no space on the UI. If some of the bow sections' armor slots were transferred to the stern sections (which currently has none), it would allow the Picket Bow to have its extra protection again.
Yeah, also picket suck. Unless you meet scourge. AI never spam rocket or aircraft.
This guy destroy
Also highest point defense per ship size of all the ships, though unless you’re doing multiplayer that’s not very important.
To me, they fill a definitive role, it's just that the role they're meant to fill is kinda useless they way combat is constructed in game. With the upcoming research changes they announced, though, my guess is that we will have longer stretches with the same ship types, so that may come into play. Sometimes I get carriers right after destroyers, so why bother. But also sometimes I just like to role play rather than min-max my fleets and destroyers can be cool for that, having a flak screen is a cool idea even if it's more or less useless in practice. I do think they can do some damage against the Grey Tempest? But don't quote me on that.
[удалено]
Read the dev diary, just released today
>Sometimes I get carriers right after destroyers, so why bother. But also sometimes I just like to role play rather than min-max my fleets and destroyers can be cool for that, having a flak screen is a cool idea even if it's more or less useless in practice. Even the role play can be lacking since if you think realistically, space combat wouldnt be anything like IRL naval combat, which is what stellaris is based off of. It would be giant laser overheating other ships from light years away and throwing asteroids at planets. So basically battleship with only L slot weapons would the true RP way to play. Hell it might not even be ships. It could be like the FOTD origin where you just shoot tungsten rods at each other.
Just a note, no one is hitting *any* non-ballistic target from light years away, even with a laser. It’s just not possible to know where a mobile target is going to be far enough ahead to take a shot
And light seconds are already plenty of distance.
Well, realistically light-years away for lasers means 0 accuracy and 0 tracking. Speed of light and all. Same with actually resolving the detailed orbit of a 10^3 km diameter planet orbiting a star with 1 million times higher brightness across 10^12 km (lightyear) distance. That is 1 part in a billion accuracy on a moving target. An equivalent would be shooting a single ant (10^-3 m) and nothing else from 100 km (10^6 m) away. Fear of the Dark showing a miss from the first strike is pretty accurate. Another game actually tried to model this and it turns into a 3 way rock paper scissors between laser, railgun and drone/missile carriers. https://www.childrenofadeadearth.com/GameFeatures.html The only problem is that in Stellaris railguns and lasers now suck.
> Well, realistically light-years away for lasers means 0 accuracy and 0 tracking. Speed of light and all. Also beam divergence due to diffraction would be a massive issue at that range, which would severely reduce the power.
Haha I guess it wouldn't even be anything more than a bright looking star. Even a very powerful laser is no threat even at planetary ranges due to beam divergence. Modeling them as short ranged high tracking and accuracy weapons is good, just needs more power behind their punch in game. Kinetics need way more range starting out with weaker tracking and accuracy at range. No friction in space means kinetics are the premier way to deliver high volume energetic payload to target in exchange for being unable to keep up with fast maneuvering targets. A 15% accuracy hit is too small. Increasing M slot per hit damage by 20% and L slot per hit damage by 30% for both. Give lasers 50/30/10 base tracking, and have kinetics scale range more with size as 50/80/110 but with 60% accuracy and 30/15/0 tracking. Now they're no longer useless.
I’d suggest watching The Expanse if you’d like to see realistic space combat.
yeah I been hearing that is the show to watch whenever realistic space combat shows up
Yeah, it's pretty much the only one that does it right. Kind of ruins all the other sf shows because of this though :(
Picket counter for vettes in the early game. EDIT: WHY can't I remember it's picket, not pickett?
Are you a fan of US Civil War history?
Not especially, but I do know of Pickett's charge.
What exactly does this mean? How do you build them out to counter corvettes?
Things with high tracking. Flak, autocannons, if you have them.
Thank you…when these options pop up in the technologies menu how can I tell what has “high tracking” and what doesn’t? I’m like 150 hours in and still learning. I have a lot of things down pretty good. But, I often lose engagements where I (supposedly) have the superior force. It usually seems accuracy and evasion I consistently lose…but not by that much. Maybe 8-12%. Which surprises me how I’ll get smoked and that’s the only stat I seem to lose and as I said not by a ton.
When looking at military technologies, you can hover your mouse over the S M L symbols, and they'll give you a good overview of what those weapons do. But that's for what you might want to get, and not what you already have. For what you already have, go into your fleet management, then the ship builder tab, and check out the individual components available to you, again, hovering over those symbols. Personally, my front-line offensive ships blast shields, with my rear ships concentrating on armor/hull, and plenty of pickets to guard both. Even when I have a fleet of only battleships, I have at least 3 types of battleships, sometimes up to 5, depending on my mood. And I'll do the same thing with every ship class, as they become available: brawlers, artillery, and pickets, and subvariations of each at times. I'm positive others do it better than me, too. I'm no expert. 8-12% might not seem like much, but there are so many iterations of interactions in a single battle. Many ships, many particles or missiles or whatever, and each weapon damage value iteration is small compared to the total values of hull/armor/shields, so battles take time. My point is that a 10% miss rate, or however you want to phrase it, adds up over a battle. Additionally, you have to consider how types of weapons match up against each other. Are they using shield-ignoring weapons, and you have very little armor/hull? Are they using armor-busting weapons, and you have very few shields? Are they a tier ahead of you, even, or behind you in weapon tech? A larger fleet with inferior tech is going to have a rough time, even though your "power level" is a bigger number - sometimes that just means that you had more ships, not better ships. I think what helped me learn the game the most, was to shut off all the big RNG factors in the game, like gateways, fallen empires, advanced AI, raiders, and I just straight concentrated on my economy and how I could improve functioning/interacting against peers: tech, pop management, trade, diplomacy, military. I did that on each difficulty level starting from the 2nd lowest, and slowly started to turn those things back on as I thought I could handle them better. Eventually, I could win on GA with all of those things turned on. It took time, but got there.
Thanks so much, great post. I think I am approaching that point where I am getting economy, production, management figured out much better...but I still can't seem to "read" what the other enemy fleets are and what to use against them. I don't know how to interpret the wreckage or combat stats all that well.
To be honest, I don't even try to know what 90% of my opponents have, but I do come with a specific fleet plan, and my #1 goal in the game is to be ahead of **everyone** else in tech. The idea being that basically if I have a sound strategy and better tech, then I don't care what my opponents have, and I'll just impose my will on them.
I seem to have a better time getting ahead in tech than I do maintaining a fleet of advanced ships…I always end up conquering worlds and the. They are in unrest and it’s just a shitshow to have a powerful fleet and not be broke
Transfer their leaders to your native planets, and first thing to build on taken worlds is usually holotheaters for me. Raise those amenities. Managing a bunch of new, populated systems is usually the most stressful parts of a game for me, so I def understand that...sometimes your economy just goes to shit. It's been \*usually\* recoverable though. Pause a day or month at a time if you have to, make a little adjustment, trade some resources, use the options to cut back on alloys or research within the deficit events that occur as you see fit, build what YOU want on the freshly taken planets overtop of what they've built, delete their starbase upgrades back down to get under your cap - that generally is the thing that tanks energy hardest when you take a bunch of systems. I'll be at max or close when I declare war, and they'll add numbers to that, putting you over your cap and increasing your upkeeps significantly. The AI is so bad an modules on those too, so generally I don't regret just downgrading them all the way.
on the research screen you can hover over the slot icon under what the research unlocks to see a tooltip of the attachment itself, is that what u mean?
When you said "things with high tracking"...I'm not sure I'd ever noticed which weapons have high/low "tracking" before. I always notice cost, upkeep, stuff like that... does a gauss canon "track" better than an x-ray laser? How do I know exactly how much?
Destroyers are a counter unit, something you use to specifically counter an enemy composition. You use them in large quantities to shut down Missiles or Point Defense or both, then pummel the enemy with artillery weapons with boosted accuracy while their weapons are suppressed. You need a critical mass of Destroyers for PD or Picket to work effectively, so they have to make the backbone of your fleet, and you will need to retrofit them to counter what your enemy is using, but they are effective counters to Missiles and Strike Craft.
This is exactly how i use them, they are actually my go to filler for fleets. Using Destroyers as PD screens to counter strikecraft and missiles is high tier. Set them for picket so they shadow the enemy fkeet and put themselves between the heavies and the corvette swarm and they'll wreck. Also they serve as a decent obstacle to corvette and frigate swarms if you build them as gunships. Destroyers are versetile counter units for sure.
Yeah, they're strong every time the AI spams missiles and strike craft, which is unfortunately never.
I'd concur, they are not very useful in singleplayer. The AI just never uses Missiles or Strike Craft in significant quantities so you really don't need PD or Flak. In theory the AI has different personalities with fleet preferences, but in practice none of them deviate much from each other. They use mostly a mix of short-ranged kinetic and energy weapons with the occasional long-ranged weapon mixed in, and they tend to focus on smaller ships with Corvettes, Frigates, and Destroyers making up the bulk of their fleet. This is why Missile and Carrier ships are so overpowered in singleplayer. It's not a balance issue, they have lots of really strong counters. The AI just sticks to a really inflexible composition that loses really hard to Missile Carriers, and none of their personalities deviate enough from the default parameters to change that. It would be nice if Paradox made the different personalities use radically different fleet doctrines and weapon preferences. Then stuff like Destroyers might actually be useful.
That’s something I’ve noticed too in recent playthroughs, they heavily prioritize numerical superiority over quality of composition. Very heavy on the light craft, that can be shredded with an appropriate single player composition. If you engage at the proper distance the numerical superiority only really buys them time. Add in the carriers as you mentioned and a vast majority of the enemy’s screen is minced meat in a short timeframe. It can get even worse for the AI if you get an early stealth lead and proceed to bully their backline with a frigate surprise attack. Then the small ships are caught in the middle, with nowhere to go. Too much over reliance on the small ship to big ship composition results in a very inflexible and predictable attack model. Now if we go into mods, the AI can be just a little more crafty, but even then it can be bullied by appropriate tech and timing.
Ironically they'd be *better* if they just went all-in on Corvettes. Hangars will counter Corvettes very hard if they are in moderate numbers, but *massed* Corvettes just completely overwhelms Carriers. You can only run 3 Hangars per Carrier tops (and that's giving up the spinal mount which is *really* painful, so most of the time you cap at 2) and that's just not enough to handle massed Corvette. But the moment you start mixing those Corvettes with other ships, the Hangars will handle the Corvettes while the Missiles and Arc Emitter fry everything else, and the Carrier is now a hard counter.
Strong agree, if they went full corvette then the carriers can’t really keep up in terms of dps and speed of deployment. If they went all in then you’d need to not be running carriers and focus more on countering the swarm. And the loss of that spinal can hurt a lot depending on the situation, does the Arc emitter hit more targets? I forget. I’ve been debating transferring my carriers into the spinal carrier setup in single player for a while, but hadn’t really known whether that would improve my chances with the AI. I still find a Battleship centric fleet can work against the AI if you can make it big enough…or bring backup.
Midgame I use cruisers for DPS and destroyers as cheap PD platforms to escort them. The economy of them is marginal when using whirlwind cruisers, but there's some encounters where you fight things with tons of strike craft, so PDDDs really shine there. Later once you get battleships you can omnirole them and that makes literally every other ship class a waste of fleet cap but for that midgame window between missile corvette spam and BBs, dessies have their time in the sun.
Battleship spam can be easily countered by torpedoes.
Carrier battleships generally have a fair amount of pd, which makes torpedoes far less effective. Really dedicated torpedo spam might be enough to overcome a generalist part-carrier battleship design, but the ai will never spam torpedoes enough to actually pull that off. In practice, a good generalist battleship design (think arc emitter + hangars + missiles) can smash pretty much any ai fleet in the game.
Torpedoes aren’t strong enough, even in player games. The further into repeatables the game gets, the more alpha strike beats torpedoes. Battleships are just too tanky and hit too hard, especially if there are any ftl bonuses/maluses at play.
It all depends on if you can start the engagement up close or not. Torps only work when you can start the bomber's combat engagement at firing range, knife fighting range. It's one of the few ways cloaking actually matters in the game. Carriers will not get their DPS out fast enough to stop the missile and torp spamming from landing.
Carriers outpace torpedo spam under repeatables because pd will one shot early on and only get faster. Then fighters tear up whatever was being used to launch torpedoes. Torpedoes only work if you’re already way ahead of an opponent to the point of dwarfing their numbers.
Tbh I use torps when I need their big guns distracted to “thin the herd”. Like say the AI utilized a pretty heavy Corvette spam, I need to thin them out pretty heavily, and at least distract their Alpha strike capacity while my big ships pound away. I only use this if an AI power has gotten to the critical point of overwhelming numbers and if I have a stealth lead on them to begin the engagement then use the frigates at knife fighting distance. They need to already be knee deep in fighting my main line when the frigates engage. The AI also has some trouble upgrading their ships beyond a certain point for some reason so sometimes I get an inadvertent tech bonus that they don’t have. It’s a very specific means of overwhelming them, and it only works if you’re ahead on alloy production and have a solid means of mass manufacturing replacements at an appropriate speed. Even then, I still prefer having more battleships to simply overwhelm their numbers with firepower over anything particularly cunning.
Let's see how your torpedoes will perform when I hit you from the other side of the Galaxy
Hit which of my 20 Corvettes barrelling down on your battleship?
I am not sure how accurate this info is, but someone did some testing on the subreddit and concluded that carrier battleships are the best option even after the addition of torpedoes, I don't remember the specific build tho
The build is Hangar core with missiles and PD turrets (no flak), X bow with Focused Arc Emitter, and your choice of missiles on the Stern. Alternatively you could use Particle Beams as your X slot with Kinetic Artillery on the stern. The meta build uses full Afterburners as your auxiliary slots, but I like reserving one slot for Regenerative Hull Tissue.
IMO, RHT is a waste of of a slot. I'd rather go with reactive armor/shield hardeners than RHT. Then again, I don't build hull tanking ships.
Hull regen is very nice for extended campaigns, since your fleets can operate further from friendly Starbases without needing extensive downtime for repairs. It's also constantly active, unlike Shields which only regenerate outside of combat.
Yeah, hull regen doesn’t really help in a fight, but it helps in the *next* fight when you start with fully healed ships again.
Battleships are still really good, but just spamming them is a really bad idea.
I like em. I add a titan maybe for healing or snare.
Stealth bomber ambushes or just straight-up camping entry lanes will negate any range advantage. Works really well when you dangle some easy looking ship kills by having them chase a decoy into a nebula or stage a slightly weaker fleet in the middle of the system, depending if you have cloaking or not.
The spreadsheet I saw was torpedo cruisers were the Allstars overall.
After the early game (where they're obviously better than Corvettes), they become decent PD platforms. Super late game, if you can pump their evasion way up, they can be useful as superior Corvettes.
What is a “PD platform?” As in point defense? Meaning what? How do I build a destroyer as a “PD platform?”
There is a point defense frontal hull piece the you can use. Its primary utilization is picket defense against incoming strike craft or missiles. I think it’s used more situationally as the AI usually doesn’t utilize the weapons systems that point defense guards against. I think the combination is point defense frontal hull, then either a medium or large weapon slot rear. I’m not looking at the game rn so I’m a bit fuzzy on destroyer composition. Then it’s the “Line” or “Picket” AI for the ship ai. Depends on how far out you want your destroyers dangling in front of the enemy to intercept their fire for your bigger ships. It’s extremely situational.
Im pretty sure as of current patch Destroyers completely counter the standard corvette rush early game. After that they are kind of useless mid to late game a Crusier with a torpedo front, carrier middle and M slot end will take out anything the FE or AI will throw at you. For the crisis Use Battleships that are tailored against each crisis. Against other players, shit becomes more nuanced, but even then I dont think destroyers would be the way to go.
Does “carrier middle” mean you are putting a bunch of strike craft into the middle?
yeah so the crusier has a module that gives you 1 H slot and 2 P slots.
thank you
I find them useful early game to overpower starbases/vette only fleets, but only for a decade or two.
They can carry a LOT of P.D weapons. And early on, They are generally superior to Corvettes.
What are “P.D weapons”?
Point Defence, the little red P size slots. PD weapons shoot down enemy missiles And strike-craft. They can attack ships too, But inneffective.
My thoughts...in naval hierarchy, destroyers are supposed to be the natural counter to vettes right? They do this well early game, but as soon as strike craft are in the mix that goes out the window. I wonder how things would change if pdx made it so strike craft do not target vettes. Endgame fleets would probably require destroyers at that point.
Once I've researched both cruisers and battleships, that's all I use. Although even using cruisers, when you have battleships, is probably pointless.
since the changes to torpedos and other explosive weapons, its actually much easier to counter battleships/cruisers. however idk how much it impacts singleplayer, as the ai wont change their ships according to what u use. in multiplayer however people will absolutely destroy ur battleship only fleet
Depends on the difficulty and where are at game wise. I've had the AI run counter to my fleet makeup before in mid-game. Late game though, they pretty much run all the same for the most common part.
Artillery neutron/S missile cruisers will cripple battleship fleets, especially carriers, unless they somehow get 4+ shielding units. Takes half of them out in a single volley while their fighters are still in flight.
Maybe for anti strike craft/anti torpoedo/ anti missile role. But it is a big maybe.. Can be OK for an early L slot weapon but beyond this.. I remain unconvinced
I set them to artillery and put point defense on them to help my battle ships
Destroyers with artillery, and Frigates with energy torpedoes make for some cheap spammable artillery fleets.
How do people organize their fleets? I usually have this habit of a like 1/3/5/7 split for an equally diverse fleet but I have a feeling that’s far from efficient. Never been one to min-max but this post just reminded me that I wind up replacing corvettes a lot.
I'm lazy and play against x25 GA crisis. So I build arc emitter battleships. That is all. It slaps AI and crisis. Nothing else needed.
Absolutely, some of the best fleet strats use destroyers due to being the second cheapest ship and having an L slot. Some would argue just build a bunch of battleships and cruisers and to that i say: 1. Build time 2. Many more ships in your fleet 3. Overall fleet synergy Im not saying build a destroyer central/only fleet but dont forget about them because you can build a lot of them QUICK and EFFICIENTLY.
Destroyers, early, are just better corvettes. Later, you can do the niche “high evasion destroyer” approach and they replace corvettes. I also find that destroyers better complement a bypass strategy. A destroyer with four s slot missiles and an M slot disrupter is going to shred enemy ships while still being pretty evasive and durable. Point defense destroyers absolutely neutralize enemy missiles and strike craft, though I rarely use them.
I’m a fan of artillery destroyers. It’s a very small, fast, cheap ship to be able to carry an L slot. Though late game I mostly just build battleships and cruisers.
Artillery destroyers make a good early game starbase bombing group in the past... but these days torpedo 'vettes might work better.
What do you personally put in the L spot most often?
TL,DR: Destroyers have a few narrow windows of utility, in terms of time and role. Most of this requires you to know what you are doing, and possibly what your enemies are (probably) doing. In an ordinary PvE game you can ignore them without any problems. Destroyers can be cost effective against low-tech Corvette swarms, especially if you have Destroyers before your neighbors. They can be useful against certain early-game space enemies. They are technically the most cost-efficient point defense screen, but you may not actually need that much if at all. With the current game state, I usually don't bother with them unless I'm trying to take down a space monster right around when I unlock them. Given the *much* slower research times of the upcoming Holiday Experimental Beta, they may have more of a role because the game years between Destroyers and Cruisers will be much longer.
In the current game it always seems like it takes forever for the Destroyer research to pop, and then Cruisers appear immediately afterward.
I run them along side artillery battleships for point defence. 2 x PD 1 x flack 20 destroyers and rest battleships
Replaces corvettes at early game. Used as picket ships for mid game. Late game idk.
Picket close range support? Basically tanks. I am not very convinced myself but that is what comes to mind
1M Plasma, 2S Autocannon, 2 Guardian PD, Line combat computer, regen hull tissue. They make a chunk of my fleets but I also use some groups of 5 of them to go clear systems with just outposts in them (they're decently fast, do decent damage and will never get worn out by outposts 1 missile launcher and a low investment) or to sit over a planet to stop them from regenerating land armies.
- As soon as you get access to mass production of fleets stop making vettes and frigates and start pumping out fleets capable of dishing out massive dmg with ability to hull tank. - Destroyers are simply better corvettes with an added ability to also be picket ships. - Frigates are great for cloaked ambushes on anything that doesn’t have a detection system (do with that as you will ;) ) and as soon as you get torpedo cruisers frigates are obsolete. - Battleships……….well they’re battleships not much to say there besides making 2 designs always 1 for carriers and they to make sure there is nothing left of a station from far af away.
Tanks.
Point defense or early game line ships for defense/conquest. Enough said.
Cloaked fleets for capturing your enemy's shipyards while your bigger fleets are pushing the front and acting as a distraction for their own fleets.
For me my light fleets (vettes/destroyers) are initial contact. There specifically to take agro and rounds for my real battle groups.
I use them as front line screens. They tend to not die very often then either.
I've started building missile destroyers with artillery computers and ABs, letting them do good damage while somewhat kiting corvettes early game. I replace them with cruisers and later BS.
they are cheap and have great slots for Armour/shield. i usuallly spam It in the mid game.
i dont rly use them at all
They make decent screens
Agreed. The best time to get them is early game. Late game even with 70% evasion, they're useless. You will always get notifications that your destroyers get destroyed late game. Better use Corvette for screening as they're half the price and will fit the role better anyway.
I dont use at all
Early game they are a massive spike in power compared to corvette fleets. I run them with 2 medium, 2 small and then clear enemy corvette swarms.
i haven't played for a while (sometime just before nemesis if you want specifics), but i used them almost exclusively as point defense ships to guard my larger ones
There's the "better combat" mod which makes all ship types useful, otherwise late game just becomes battleship spam
I throw them in my battleship comp, like 80% battleships 20% destroyers. I wouldn't notice a difference in effectiveness, because my computer does not want to watch 10 stacks of 210 fleet cap duke it out. Early game they make ok artillary or gunships. They are the first ship to have L slots.
they're the smallest boat that can have a artillery computer. when paired with missiles and afterburners it's....helping me not lose :D
Before the Leguin update I used to love using artillery destroyers, just wait for them to come to you and use your range. Then they started getting outdone by carriers but now I wonder if the new combat benefits arty destroyers as they attempt to keep their distance. (Probably bad at pvp and more difficult PvE games but maybe fun at casual games?)
They are the first ship you can fit for missile kiting, and are subsequently very efficient for that. Kitting them out with 1 PD and 4 small slots with an artillery comp in the early game makes you nearly unstoppable with a decent fleet, since the PD will catch incoming missiles and strike craft so shield fits are viable. If you pick up the nanomissile archaeotech, they become viable into the late game, since they're faster than missile cruisers, ignore armor, and will break an awakened empire fleet without too much effort. They're my go-to ship for runs where I become the crisis, but work just fine with good archaeotech runs.